Call Home

Call Home provides an email-based notification for critical system policies. A range of message formats are available for compatibility with pager services or XML-based automated parsing applications. You can use this feature to page a network support engineer, email a Network Operations Center, or use Cisco Smart Call Home services to generate a case with the Technical Assistance Center.

The Call Home feature can deliver alert messages containing information about diagnostics and environmental faults and events.

The Call Home feature can deliver alerts to multiple recipients, referred to as Call Home destination profiles. Each profile includes configurable message formats and content categories. A predefined destination profile is provided for sending alerts to the Cisco TAC, but you also can define your own destination profiles.

When you configure Call Home to send messages, Cisco UCS Manager executes the appropriate CLI show command and attaches the command output to the message.

Cisco UCS delivers Call Home messages in the following formats:

Short text format which provides a one or two line description of the fault that is suitable for pagers or printed reports.

Full text format which provides fully formatted message with detailed information that is suitable for human reading.

For information about the faults that can trigger Call Home email alerts, see the Cisco UCS Faults and Error Messages Reference.

The following figure shows the flow of events after a Cisco UCS fault is triggered in a system with Call Home configured:

Figure 1. Flow of Events after a Fault is Triggered

Call Home Considerations and Guidelines

How you configure Call Home depends on how you intend to use the feature. The information you need to consider before you configure Call Home includes the following:

Destination Profile

You must configure at least one destination profile. The destination profile or profiles that you use depend upon whether the receiving entity is a pager, email, or automated service such as Cisco Smart Call Home.

If the destination profile uses email message delivery, you must specify a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server when you configure Call Home.

Contact Information

The contact email, phone, and street address information should be configured so that the receiver can determine the origin of messages received from the Cisco UCS domain.

Cisco Smart Call Home sends the registration email to this email address after you send a system inventory to begin the registration process.

If an email address includes special characters, such as # (hash), spaces, or & (ampersand), the email server may not be able to deliver email messages to that address. Cisco recommends that you use email addresses which comply with RFC2821 and RFC2822 and include only 7bit ASCII characters.

IP Connectivity to Email Server or HTTP Server

The fabric interconnect must have IP connectivity to an email server or the destination HTTP server. In a cluster configuration, both fabric interconnects must have IP connectivity. This connectivity ensures that the current, active fabric interconnect can send Call Home email messages. The source of these email messages is always the IP address of a fabric interconnect. The virtual IP address assigned Cisco UCS Manager in a cluster configuration is never the source of the email.

Smart Call Home

If Cisco Smart Call Home is used, the following are required:

An active service contract must cover the device being configured

The customer ID associated with the Smart Call Home configuration in Cisco UCS must be the CCO (Cisco.com) account name associated with a support contract that includes Smart Call Home

Cisco UCS Faults and Call Home Severity Levels

Because Call Home is present across several Cisco product lines, Call Home has developed its own standardized severity levels. The following table describes how the underlying Cisco UCS fault levels map to the Call Home severity levels. You need to understand this mapping when you configure the Level setting for Call Home profiles.

Cisco Smart Call Home

Cisco Smart Call Home is a web application which leverages the Call Home feature of Cisco UCS. Smart Call Home offers proactive diagnostics and real-time email alerts of critical system events, which results in higher network availability and increased operational efficiency. Smart Call Home is a secure connected service offered by Cisco Unified Computing Support Service and Cisco Unified Computing Mission Critical Support Service for Cisco UCS.

Note

Using Smart Call Home requires the following:

A CCO ID associated with a corresponding Cisco Unified Computing Support Service or Cisco Unified Computing Mission Critical Support Service contract for your company.

Cisco Unified Computing Support Service or Cisco Unified Computing Mission Critical Support Service for the device to be registered.

You can configure and register Cisco UCS Manager to send Smart Call Home email alerts to either the Smart Call Home System or the secure Transport Gateway. Email alerts sent to the secure Transport Gateway are forwarded to the Smart Call Home System using HTTPS.

Note

For security reasons, we recommend using the Transport Gateway option. The Transport Gateway can be downloaded from Cisco.

To configure Smart Call Home, you must do the following:

Enable the Smart Call Home feature.

Configure the contact information.

Configure the email information.

Configure the SMTP server information.

Configure the default CiscoTAC-1 profile.

Send a Smart Call Home inventory message to start the registration process.

Ensure that the CCO ID you plan to use as the Call Home Customer ID for the Cisco UCS domain has the contract numbers from the registration added to its entitlements. You can update the ID in the account properties under Additional Access in the Profile Manager on CCO.

Configuring Call Home

Procedure

Command or Action

Purpose

Step 1

UCS-A# scope monitoring

Enters monitoring mode.

Step 2

UCS-A /monitoring # scope callhome

Enters monitoring call home mode.

Step 3

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome # enable

Enables Call Home.

Step 4

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome # set contactname

Specifies the name of the main Call Home contact person.

Step 5

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome # set emailemail-addr

Specifies the email address of the main Call Home contact person.

Note

If an email address includes special characters, such as # (hash), spaces, or & (ampersand), the email server may not be able to deliver email messages to that address. Cisco recommends that you use email addresses which comply with RFC2821 and RFC2822 and include only 7bit ASCII characters.

Step 6

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome # set phone-contactphone-num

Specifies the phone number of the main Call Home contact person. The phone number must be in international format, starting with a + (plus sign) and a country code.

Step 7

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome # set street-addressstreet-addr

Specifies the street address of the main Call Home contact person.

Enter up to 255 ASCII characters.

Step 8

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome # set customer-idid-num

Specifies the CCO identification number that includes the contract numbers for the support contract in its entitlements. The number can be up to 255 alphanumeric characters in free format.

Step 9

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome # set contract-idid-num

Specifies the contract identification number from the service agreement. The number can be up to 255 alphanumeric characters in free format.

Step 10

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome # set site-idid-num

Specifies the site identification number from the service agreement. The number can be up to 255 alphanumeric characters in free format.

Step 11

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome # set from-emailemail-addr

Specifies the email address to use for the From field in Call Home messages.

Step 12

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome # set reply-to-emailemail-addr

Specifies the email address to use for the Reply To field in Call Home messages.

Step 13

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome # set hostname{hostname | ip-addr}

Specifies the hostname or IP address of the SMTP server that Call Home uses to send email messages.

Step 14

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome # set portport-num

Specifies the SMTP server port that Call Home uses to send email messages. Valid port numbers are 1 to 65535.

Step 15

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome # set throttling{off | on}

Enables or disables Call Home throttling. When enabled, throttling prevents too many Call Home email messages from being sent for the same event. By default, throttling is enabled.

Specifies the urgency level for Call Home email messages. In the context of a large UCS deployment with several pairs of fabric interconnects, the urgency level potentially allows you to attach significance to Call Home messages from one particular Cisco UCS domain versus another. In the context of a small UCS deployment involving only two fabric interconnects, the urgency level holds little meaning.

Step 17

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome # commit-buffer

Commits the transaction to the system configuration.

The following example configures Call Home and commits the transaction:

Call Home Profiles

Call Home profiles determine which alerts are sent to designated recipients. You can configure the profiles to send email alerts for events and faults at a desired severity level and for specific alert groups that represent categories of alerts. You can also use these profiles to specify the format of the alert for a specific set of recipients and alert groups.

Each alert that Cisco UCS generates fits into a category represented by an alert group, such as the following:

Environmental alerts, including fans and power supplies

Diagnostic alerts, such as POST completion failure on a server

Alert groups and Call Home profiles enable you to filter the alerts and ensure that a specific profile only receives certain categories of alerts. For example, a data center may have a hardware team that handles issues with fans and power supplies. This hardware team does not care about server POST failures or licensing issues. To ensure that the hardware team only receives relevant alerts, create a Call Home profile for the hardware team and check only the "environmental" alert group.

By default, you must configure the Cisco TAC-1 profile. However, you can also create additional profiles to send email alerts to one or more alert groups when events occur at the level that you specify and provide the recipients with the appropriate amount of information about those alerts.

For example, you may want to configure two profiles for faults with a major severity:

A profile that sends an alert to the Supervisor alert group in the short text format. Members of this group receive a one- or two-line description of the fault that they can use to track the issue.

A profile that sends an alert to the CiscoTAC alert group in the XML format. Members of this group receive a detailed message in the machine readable format preferred by the Cisco Systems Technical Assistance Center.

Configuring a Call Home Profile

By default, you must configure the Cisco TAC-1 profile, However, you can also create additional profiles to send email alerts to one or more specified groups when events occur at the level that you specify.

Specifies the event level for the profile. Each profile can have its own unique event level.

Cisco UCS faults that are greater than or equal to the event level will trigger this profile.

Step 5

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome/profile # set alertgroupsgroup-name

ciscotac

diagnostic

environmental

inventory

license

lifecycle

linecard

supervisor

syslogport

system

test

Specifies one or more groups that are alerted based on the profile. The group-name argument can be one or more of the following keywords entered on the same command line:

Step 6

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome/profile # add alertgroupsgroup-names

(Optional)

Adds one or more groups to the existing list of groups that are alerted based on the Call Home profile.

Note

You must use the add alertgroups command to add more alert groups to the existing alert group list. Using the set alertgroups command will replace any pre-existing alert groups with a new group list.

Step 7

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome/profile # set format{shorttxt | xml}

Specifies the formatting method to use for the e-mail messages.

Step 8

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome/profile # set maxsizeid-num

Specifies the maximum size (in characters) of the email message.

Step 9

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome/profile # create destinationemail-addr

Specifies the email address to which Call Home alerts should be sent. Use multiple create destination commands in monitoring call home profile mode to specify multiple email recipients. Use the delete destination command in monitoring call home profile mode to delete a specified email recipient.

Step 10

UCS-A /monitoring/callhome/profile/destination # commit-buffer

Commits the transaction to the system configuration.

The following example configures a Call Home profile and commits the transaction:

Call Home Policies

Call Home policies determine whether or not Call Home alerts are sent for a specific type of fault or system event. By default, Call Home is enabled to send alerts for certain types of faults and system events. However, you can configure Cisco UCS not to process certain types.

To disable alerts for a type of fault or events, you must create a Call Home policy for that type, and you must first create a policy for that type and then disable the policy.

Configuring a Call Home Policy

Tip

By default, email alerts are sent for all critical system events. However, you can optionally configure Call Home policies to enable or disable sending email alerts for other critical system events.